George the Long-Legged Fly's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

George had six days left, and he did not know which way to fly. He clung to a reed above the pond and watched the surface for the small warnings other flies missed. He was the best in his patch at holding still over water. His brother had been faster. His brother had died in the night, without a ripple, and George had never told him the truth about who was quicker. Six days was the average a long-legged fly could still expect, if nothing worse arrived first. George meant to find the hidden flower before then, the one whose nectar was said to stretch an insect's life past the usual count. The trouble was the map inside his head was blank. He had asked every fly in his patch and gotten shrugs and warnings that he was wasting his last week. So he flew to the tavern built inside a fallen log, where insects traded rumors over spilled sap. He landed on a barrel and listened. A cricket said the flower grew where no rain fell. A moth said the opposite. George bought nothing and learned less. He was ready to leave when a bumblebee dropped onto the barrel beside him, wings damp, one leg shaking. She introduced herself as George the Bumblebee. She said she had come from the rainforest canopy. She said she was lost, out of contingencies, and looking for anyone heading anywhere useful. George told her what he wanted. She thought for a moment and set a small brown book on the barrel between them. "Beekeeper's journal," she said. "Traded for it two seasons back. Never used it. Bee routes, not mine." George opened the cover. The pages smelled of smoke and old wax. Halfway through, a hand-drawn map showed a chain of hives along a river, and past the last hive, a single flower sketched in yellow ink. Beneath it, three words: long-life bloom. A compass rose pointed the reader east, toward the sun's rising edge. George closed the book and pressed his front legs against the cover. His direction was chosen. He asked the bumblebee what she wanted for it. She said she wanted a guide out of the log and someone who could read water, because her wings were still wet and she could not risk another wrong tree. George agreed. He had six days, one map, and a partner who could not navigate. He stepped off the barrel and out into the light, east now, with a road at last and less time than before to travel it.